Spanish banks downgraded by Moody's, impact on US banks unclear

A story from yesterday, but still important.  Included in the list of 28 downgraded Spanish banks are Santander and BBVA, two of their largest banks and two that operate in the US as well. BBVA accepted a substantial bailout late last year. While the two Spanish giants were not as heavily downgraded as other banks, it's still a concern.

What remains unclear is the impact any of this will have on their US operations. Santander, in particular, needs to focus on its home turf which is falling apart by the day. US regulators ought to be digging into this though looking at their history, they probably aren't. Bloomberg:

Banco Santander SA (SAN) and Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria SA (BBVA), Spain’s largest lenders, were downgraded by Moody’s Investors Service because of the country’s sovereign debt and souring real-estate loans.

While Santander and BBVA remained investment grade, at least a dozen lenders were lowered to junk status, Moody’s said yesterday in a statement. The ratings company downgraded six banks by four levels and 10 by three grades, with the rest getting one- and two-tier declines.

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Chemical in plastics linked to child obesity

Why does child obesity want to charge business more money in regulation and demand that they use safe chemicals? Child obesity needs to think a lot more about what's good for business. We need to create jobs and the only way business can afford to create plastic products is if they are using chemicals that have the mild side effect of being linked to child obesity.

Get with the program, child obesity and stop being so selfish. Think about the jobs and profits!

But new research suggests that chemicals called phthalates, which are found in the plastics that pacifiers and toys are typically made of, may be linked to higher rates of obesity in children.

The chemical, called di-ethylhexyl phthalate (DEHP), is suspected of being able to alter biological functions involved in fat metabolism. In the study, children with the highest DEHP levels had nearly five times the chance of being obese compared with those who had the lowest DEHP levels.

How could a chemical used to soften plastics trigger fat development in a child?

"It may trigger the master regulator of fat creation and lipid metabolism," explained study co-author Dr. Mi-Jung Park, a pediatric endocrinologist and professor at Inje University College of Medicine, in Seoul, South Korea.

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Video: Portland weather timelapse

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As many as 20 House Dems may vote to hold Holder in contempt

Keep in mind, this means those Democrats are voting in support of some nutty GOP conspiracy theory that the "Fast and Furious" program was really a secret attempt by the Obama administration to justify going after Amurika's guns.

Yes, the Obama administration supposedly intentionally let bad guys in Mexico get American guns so that the bad guys could then kill good guys, thus giving the US government the excuse it needed to launch a nationwide clampdown on all gun ownership everywhere.

Seriously.

Brought to you by the NRA, the far-right nuts running the Republican party, and a handful of Democrats who just don't have the cojones to every vote for what's right.

David Horsey in the Baltimore Sun:

Michael Vanderboegh, a blogger with militia ties and a long history of talking up armed resistance to the government, asserts that the ATF purposely let the guns go to the bad guys in Mexico so that, after the ensuing bloodbath, the feds could justify a crackdown on assault weapons and gun shows.

Now, to rational human beings, that may sound totally ludicrous, but not to the folks at Fox News. They have made Mr. Vanderboegh a prime source for their coverage of this dispute, being elastic enough in their measure of qualifications to identify him as an "online journalist." It's not just Fox News, though. Mr. Vanderboegh's curious theory has been picked up and repeated by Republican members of Congress, including Iowa's previously sane Sen. Chuck Grassley who, in a TV interview, echoed the idea that Messrs. Obama and Holder could be using the Phoenix fiasco to build a case against gun rights.

This fits in with the broader conspiracy theory of Wayne LaPierre, the head of the National Rifle Association. The NRA boss has insisted that the reason Mr. Obama has done nothing to harm the Second Amendment in his first term is so he can win another four years in office, at which point his administration will start confiscating guns with no fear of retribution from voters. That's right, according to Mr. LaPierre, President Obama is not taking your guns now so he can take them later.

And as Horsey notes, Cong. Issa, who's running the anti-Holder show for the GOP in the House is fully in bed with the conspiracy theory, having repeated it himself. Read the rest of this post...

OECD: US must address income inequality problem

Somehow the problem of income inequality keeps getting worse, yet few in Washington bother to discuss it. The GOP still clings to the belief that Reaganomics or whatever you want to call trickle-down is working and still relevant. The Democrats are too owned by many of the same corporate interests to care much about the plight of the middle class, since they can't fund a campaign.

The GOP has an obvious racist and bigot problem that they need to resolve for the future. At the same time, if the Democrats want to remain viable in the future, they're going to have to start addressing the very serious problem of income inequality. It's killing the middle class and so far, the Democrats have barely been committed to even talking about the problem.

At one point in American history, such a story would have been an embarrassment and caused immediate action by Washington. In this climate, it barely causes a ripple.

The OECD, which produces reports every two years, says that the US recovery is gaining momentum but remains fragile, with the country facing problems such as record long-term unemployment, income inequality and lack of investment in education and innovation.

The report is more bullish on the economy than Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke, who recently downgraded his forecasts for the US economy.

But it points out that poverty is worse in the US than in Europe. "Income inequality and relative poverty are among the highest in the OECD," the report says.

Only Chile, Mexico and Turkey among the 34 member OECD countries rank higher in terms of income inequality.

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65 percent think Obama better suited to handle extra-terrestrial invasion

Seriously. National Geographic did a poll.

lev radin / Shutterstock.com

In regards to national security, nearly two-thirds (65%) of Americans think Barack Obama would be better suited than fellow presidential candidate Mitt Romney to handle an alien invasion. In fact, more than two in three (68%) women say that Obama would be more adept at dealing with an alien invasion than Romney, vs. 61 percent of men.

Interestingly, most expect the invasion to be friendly, which apparently is why they prefer Obama. Perhaps they think Mitt would try to self-deport the aliens.

Other poll findings:

- 1/3 believe in UFOs.

- And when given a choice, people overwhelming prefer that the Hulk come save us from the alien invasion, rather than Batman or Spiderman:

[I]f aliens attacked our planet, more than one in five (21%) would most likely call on the Hulk to deal with the havoc. Far fewer would most trust Batman (12%) or Spiderman (8%) to step in.

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Video: Smart cat doesn't want to get her paws wet

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Poll: Americans don't like health care reform, but don't like current health care either

Oddly, 75% have a favorable opinion of the health care they receive.  I suspect that favorability is a combination of grandmas and grandpas that have good insurance as a result of retiring from a good company, middle age people who have yet to have a serious illness that tests just how good their health care really is, and the young who think they're invincible so they don't even need health care.

I'd be curious to see how people who have, for example, to pay a copay of 20%, 30%, or even 50% of their child's appendicitis operation, which cost $20,000 (meaning a copay of $4k to $10k) feel about the quality of their health insurance.  Or the families of people with cancer or MS, who run up against annual and lifetime limits.

Asking people how good their health care is when they're healthy is like asking someone how good a job the guy did repairing the hole in the roof when it's not raining.  Health care in America is a gamble. And if you get lucky and don't get sick, everything seems to work great.  That's not the way it should work.

PS The study shows that while people don't like HCR (and remember, they probably have no idea what's in it), they also don't like, to an equal degree, the current health care system in America.  That means the GOP needs to be careful how they handle tomorrow's Supreme Court decision.  It also means that Democrats should have done a better job defending the current law, and overall change to the system.

Tomorrow could be a big opportunity for the Obama administration to actually explain to people what the health care law does.  Keep it simple folks.  Adding kids to existing plans.  Getting rid of pre-existing conditions, annual and lifetime limits.  And lowering premiums.  For starters.  This should be the message that's repeated every day, over and over.  Just like the GOP would do, and does (except they lie). Read the rest of this post...

Romney says CO has no green jobs, despite over 70,000 of them

Sadly, the guy who will say anything was wrong again. There are lots of green jobs in Colorado if he bothered in investigate. The facts didn't fit his story though, so he lied once again. More from Inhabitat:

On a trip to Colorado, presumed Republican nominee Mitt Romney claimed that the state had no green jobs as a result of the Obama Adminstration’s energy policies. While in fact it has 72,452 jobs in “green goods and services”, according to the Bureau of Labour Statistics. Colorado’s wind energy industry alone created 4,000-5,000 jobs just last year.

Here at Inhabitat, we are used to Mitt Romney’s flip-flopping on energy issues. One moment he’s saying we should make more fuel-efficient vehicles and harness alternative energies, the next he wants to drill in Alaska, but this latest comment is either complete ignorance or simple fabrication.

Speaking in Craig, Colorado (which was the subject of a pro-fossil fuel group-funded video called “The Perfect Storm Over Craig, Colorado” that attacked the president’s energy policies), Romney strongly implied to supporters that the state had no clean energy jobs.

Speaking to the crowd, he said: “And then of course there’s his (President Obama’s) plan for energy. You see, he said he was going to create some 5 million green energy jobs. Have you seen those around here anywhere? No, as a matter of fact he’s gone after energy.”

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Northrop gives lobbyist $500k bonus just before he takes job as low-pay Congressional staffer shaping military policy

Lee Fang is on fire. And this is red hot conscienceless stuff. As you read, the name to remember is Thomas MacKenzie.

Now consider. You're a lobbyist/vice-president for Northrup Grumman, the people who help bring you — well, all those wars.

I know, this is a huge stretch — you actually have a conscience. You don't want to eat breakfast food made from napalmed children. But for the sake of argument, bear with me.

So, you've shed your conscience like a skin, you're a war-industry lobbyist, and you're about to go to work for a bought Congressman — Rep. Buck McKeon, by the way — heard of him?

But darn the luck, to do it, you're going to have to take a serious pay cut. Can't do the public good without a pay cut.

How do you keep your pockets lined while working for the public good? How about an upfront, lumpsum two-year bonus from your ex-employer — say, $250,000 per year — to tide you over? (Two years is a congressman's term of office.)

Would a half million dollars keep your present mind on your once-and-future job?

If you have no conscience about how you earn your keep (because, in fact, you are definitely kept) you say "Thank you, Master; I'm here."

Which brings us to Lee Fang's story at the heroic Republic Report. In it, Thomas McKenzie says, in effect, "Thank you, Master; I'm here" (my emphasis and paragraphing):

Northrop Grumman, the fourth largest weapons maker in the world, follows the actions of Congress very closely. The F-35, which may cost over $1.45 trillion because of unprecedented cost overruns, an expensive surveillance drone program criticized as unnecessary, and even a new fleet of nuclear bombers are among the Northrop Grumman products that may be in jeopardy as the Pentagon is forced to trim fat from the military budget.

But luckily for Northrop Grumman, which made $2.12 billionin profits last year, the firm essentially has a man on the inside of Congress with wide sway over how the government spends money on national defense.

In 2011, after Republicans seized the House of Representatives in a landslide victory, the House Armed Services Committee, which oversees the military, gained a new chairman, Representative Buck McKeon (R-CA).

As with most leadership changes, McKeon and his committee hired new professional staff. Thomas MacKenzie, a vice president at Northrop Grumman, was tapped to work for the committee beginning in March of 2011. [MacKenzie is the lobbyist perp, in case you haven't noticed.]

There are many examples of lobbyists burrowing into government to work in policy areas that impact their former employers. Theselobbyists, as Public Citizen’s Craig Holman, an expert on lobbying, has explained, seem happy to accept low-paid public service salaries, perhaps because they can expect extremely high pay once they return to K Street [the "once-and-future job" noted above].

In MacKenzie’s case, Northrop Grumman made sure he had extra cash before he went to work writing policy on the defense budget. Republic Report viewed a recently filed ethics disclosure form, and found that Northrop Grumman paid MacKenzie a $498,334 bonus in 2011, just before he went to work under McKeon as a committee staffer. ...

As a congressional staffer, MacKenzie now makes close to $120,000 a year. Representative McKeon, by far the biggest recipient of Northrop Grumman campaign contributions in Congress, has defended billions of dollars in questionable projects for MacKenzie’s former employer. ...

To see how much MacKenzie made at Northrup Grumman per year, check out Lee Fang's piece; it would be a shame not to send you there for that.

Humans rendered into profit. You read that correctly; supply the substituted noun and you got it.

* * * * *

Dozed again. I keep having them dreams. "Master, we're here" is rolling round my brain.



Conscienceless.

GP

To follow or send links: @Gaius_Publius
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Immigration is becoming a bigger and bigger problem for Romney

Conservative writer Kathleen Parker in the Washington Post:

What we have here is a sticky wicket.

And no one is in greater need of Goo Gone than Mitt Romney, who has said that Arizona’s law is a model for the rest of the nation. Not only has that law been deemed at least partly unconstitutional, but Romney is now positioned to be associated with profiling. Not the best way to court the Hispanic vote. Worse, if Arizona and other similarly minded states begin to apply the equal-treatment template across races and ethnicities, he’ll have everybody mad at him.

Not that the Arizona law is his fault, obviously. But angry people will pick the easiest target, and the Obama campaign will make sure those dots are connected. One thing is for certain: Romney can’t change his mind. He’s stuck with a position that, though appealing to Arizonans and others who are justifiably angry with our inert (inept) federal government, is profoundly offensive to our American sense of fairness. We simply don’t single out groups of people in this country for special scrutiny. What is expedient or even logical isn’t always ethical, and better that we err on the side of the latter standard.

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Egyptian president Morsi appoints woman & Coptic

When you hear some of the rhetoric from the past, it's fair to say there was some reason for concern with the potential new government. It shouldn't be difficult to do better than the last corrupt regime but as we've seen many times, it's easy to do worse.

But for now, so far, so good though time will tell.

The Muslim Brotherhood is at pains to calm fears of what an Islamist president might mean for Egypt and the region at large. Appointing both a woman and a Coptic Christian is an attempt at a show of unity, and a rule by consensus.

Meanwhile, defeated presidential candidate Ahmed Shafik – Mubarak's last prime minister and Morsi's rival in the runoff election – flew to Abu Dhabi on Tuesday morning with his two daughters. His camp denied that he had fled as investigations begin into allegations of corruption against him while minister of civil aviation. He was in Abu Dhabi for "tourism" purposes, they said.

Essawy also said that Morsi had no objection to swearing the presidential oath in front of the supreme constitutional court (SCC), widely seen as a controversial move after the dissolution of the Muslim Brotherhood-majority parliament by that very court a day before the run-off elections earlier this month. But, "that does not mean he [Morsi] acknowledges the dissolution of parliament", said Essawy, a member of Morsi's former party, Freedom and Justice (FJP).

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Deficit increases in austerity-plagued UK

In other words, what liberal economists said would happen with austerity is happening. The Tories can't admit that their plan is a failure so will surely continue their program of destruction. Bloomberg:

The shortfall, which excludes government support for banks, was 17.9 billion pounds ($28 billion) compared with 15.2 billion pounds a year earlier, the Office for National Statistics said in London today. Economists forecast a deficit of 14.8 billion pounds, according to the median of 16 estimates in a Bloomberg News survey. Spending jumped 7.9 percent and revenue rose 1.6 percent. Income-tax receipts fell 7.3 percent.

The figures may provide ammunition to the opposition Labour Party, which says the government is making the recession worse by trying to cut the deficit too quickly. With the euro-region debt crisis intensifying, the data cast doubt on whether the government can achieve its goal of cutting the deficit to 120 billion pounds in the current fiscal year.

“The deficit is going to be higher purely on the basis that the economy is going to be weaker,” said George Buckley, chief U.K. economist at Deutsche Bank AG in London. “It’s not impossible that we get deficit that is 7.5 billion pounds higher and that growth is flat for the whole year.”

This failed economic plan is what the GOP wants to bring to America. Besides it's keen ability to undermine the social system and bring down the entire economy, it's hard to say why they think it will be a success. But maybe that's their plan. Read the rest of this post...